Reporting on the last couple of months

Dear All

I am final writing another chattering. I am afraid until my thesis is finished they will be intermittent as it will depend on me having some time to spare to write a letter. As you might have gathered, if you follow my thesis blog, I ended with more editing on my thesis than I expected. The thing being that a major restructuring was required. This was not the dire news it could have been, I already had the feeling that the thesis though written just did not cling together. So the whole of October was spent firstly regrouping and reorganising my thesis, then starting to edit the chapters again. I have redrafted two chapters and am on the way with a third. There really is more on my thesis blog.

Otherwise work has been busy. I found myself carrying more and more tasks in work. I have been trying to keep on top on NVivo training that the University of Sheffield asks. I am afraid that I am not finding enough time to do this as I would like. I am not sure I will ever be able to meet the demand and I seem to become an expert by virtue of nobody else being willing to tackle it. I seriously question whether this is the right way to tackle it.

I am also keeping up with the work from Human Nutrition, this year we are hoping to do some research on Food Banks particularly with respect to the fact that the increase has been exponential in the last year. It is to try and discover how food bank provision is seen by the people who use them. The work I have been involved has shown that homeless people have aspirations to a better diet but the need to get the calories in trumps that. However there is also a culture around food and that can lead to provision being, “unhealthy”, in that the easy improvements would be unpopular with users.

There is also work around sustainability. I am also developing a close cooperation with the department of Linguistics, this is slow but sure. Perhaps one of the more unusual applications of statistics although I know there has been people applying these techniques to the authorship of Paul forever! However the number of statisticians that have actually been involved is low and there is a tendency to use sophisticated techniques when people have not understood simpler ones. There is now a seminar running and a group of about four researchers I see regularly. The final group is a number of researchers from Landscape and Architecture.

Many of them are doing quite complex work and often around the same themes. I have had to refer one of the Architecture students to landscape as what she was doing was very similar to Landscape work in approach although in a different area. Her own department tackled similar issues but took a different approach.

At the end of October my writers group had its annual reading as part of Off the Shelf .It was a good evening and the reviews we got from it were good. I think the fact that we had a reading in the summer helped as we were all up to performing. For some reasons, the fact that I supplied a portable sound system meant that people projected their voice better. The sound system was there but many did not use it. I also think we set the standard higher each year. This showed with the amount of effort we put into choosing the pieces to read. We used to accept what people brought but now Neil (our tutor) starts it with giving instructions on what makes a good piece to read and more attention in the rehearsal is given to the suitability of pieces.

On the Sunday before I got away on holiday my loo valve decided to leak water into the cistern. This meant I had to get a plumber out. In the end I found a firm called Aquagas who came out. They not only stopped the leaking that evening, over the next couple of days the plumber came out several times to get the loo working properly. Due to a lot of misadventures he ended up replacing the innards twice (everything decided to go) and in the end given the time and energy he spent on it, the charge was very reasonable. He kept going until he got it right.

The holiday was supposed to be the one for after submission. In some ways there was a real temptation to not go on holiday as I needed to write; however it was increasingly obvious that I was very tired and that I struggling to keep going. In other words even though I had not submitted I needed a break.I went up to stay in a cottage owned by the person who I have B&B with when I was visiting my God-family. My God-family is no longer there and anyway it was obvious from New Year I would near more space to myself. The cottage I booked was the Auld Smiddy. It is a really well equipped cottage. There was a slight problem with the central heating, nothing that I could not handle. The owner went away at the weekend, and I worked out even if it went completely there was no problem. There was an electric shower, kettle, modern wood fire, two electric heater and a paraffin heater. So without it I would be warm and able to wash. The kitchen was better  equipped than my own at home. There was a sun porch that looked over the fields past another cottage and over the sea to the Isle of Mann. During the week apart from crows and blackbirds that were there every day, I saw in the field: a fox, several rabbits, roe deer, sparrow hawks and a flock of redwings.

Port Patrick

Further a field there was pretty good birding, saw barnacle geese, a red kite, an egret, mergansers, pochards and kestrels. These are just the ones I could recall. I actually found that one of the reasons I liked birding was that I liked the reason to be out in the spaces that it took me to which were wilder than you would think of if you were just touring the area. The places I found were Crook of Baldoon , Wigtown Bird Hides which are down by the Harbour in Wigtown and look out over Wigtown Bay Reserve and finally North of Stranraer I found Wig Bay (that is the best link I can find ) which is World War II causeway that runs by the edge of the bay and gives views of the birds feeding at the sea edge. The wider view is not spectacular as it looks over to Stranraer and Cairnryan. Coffee is available at Soleburn Garden Centre . I also walked for a bit along the cliffs at Port Patrick but there were mainly gulls to see and I am no good at identifying gulls.

I found having a real fire was good. It was not just that it made the cottage lovely and warm but that as I reset it every morning I always knew that I had that to come back to in an evening and look forward to.  I am not sure whether I would feel the same if I had one at home but on holiday with long dark evening it made something to look forward to. I therefore did a lot of reading, not for thesis but books that had been on my to read list for far too long. Only one finished but I did start a second and found one left by another visitor called Skyward by Mary Alice Munroe. It is light, it is fairly predictable but it was enough to get me hooked into the story so that I went and bought it on Kindle when I got home so I could finish it. Unfortunately the storyline I was really interested in was not well concluded but there was still plenty to entertain.

I came back this last week and have been picking up the pieces of normal life in Sheffield. So far I seem to have more energy

22nd Sept 07

I am writing a day early in an attempt to get this out after a long period (about a month) of not writing. The reason has been essay preparation followed by a holiday that although only 10 days long manage to include two Sundays, the first through travelling up, the second because I was there and my internet connection was limited. Yes I still had wireless broadband, but at Morag's not where we were staying. That meant it was the time I could nab between demands from Jenny and Cait. The fact that my parents also wanted to read any family epistles, meant that there was a reduction even in that time.

Lets see if I can update people. First thing I can recall is worshipping at St. Andrew's Chesterfield for the first time. Problem one is how to make clear to the minister that the one thing I am definitely not there to do is to check how REFORMED it is!! I might be interested in how it embodies its Reformed position or even how it rejects it, but I will not make any judgement on whether it is making the grade as a REFORMED church. I am interested in "how" not "what". Of course you have to look at "what" to understand "how" but you are looking relationally. I am jokingly-serious thinking at present that I should get a t-shirt with "I am not the Spanish Inquisition" on the front and "nor have I any dealing with section O". Section O being the URC national disciplinary procedure which we seem to have inherited from the Congregationalists at least on my father's account. It rather functions in the same manner as the "men in grey suits" do in the Conservative Party, i.e. quietly efficient when necessary.

Then I have moved offices (again, and I doubt I will get through this year without a second move). Although I am technically in an open plan office, I have got a good space almost private surrounded with 5'6"(plus) screens and two windows (I am the only non-section person with two windows to myself! I may as well make myself comfy, as living in packing cases is miserable and the last time I did that I stayed put for three years. They told me it was temporary and then did not succeed in moving us out. The only worse experience of office space I can remember is when I basically had a open office to myself (technically I was sharing with a very part time guy). The rest of the space was huge and housed junk! So I am not a fan of big offices, I just like offices with plenty of bookshelves. At present am succeeding in keeping it tidy. I still would like my white board up and to put up a couple of photos.

We have also got as far as I think I can take St. Andrew's sound system. In that we have now put permanent supports for both the lectern microphone and a back up pulpit microphone. Both of these are wired. It now means I need to get the instructions re-written for doing the sound on a Sunday. Cliff has also shortened one of the leads for use in the pulpit.

Then there was holiday. Driving up was good, I am slowly finding a good place to stop at on the way up. I went to suss out Caerlaverock WWT site. It looks good and I am hoping to see a Barnacle Goose at Christmas time. For those who have not known me long, my M.Sc project was on Barnacle Geese. I wonder what would have happened if I had decided when I finished that that I really wanted to do was to do the job I had trained for and become an Ecological Statistician. Certainly I would have had a very different but interesting life. Not grumbling, my present life is interesting enough but it is one of those paths not taken that I am semi curious about. I don't think it occurred to me that it was a serious possibility at the time, there is really only entry for about one person per year into that field and something that was that exotic just felt totally out of my reach. If I had, I probably would have worked abroad for several years and even my jobs in the United Kingdom may well have been in out of the way places.

Well by going there I have discovered there is also a National Nature Reserve and a RSPB site at Mersehead. If you add in the cross at Ruthwell it should be easy to spend a day there and break the journey up. Coming down I think will need to be a single journey with lots of stops. There comes a time when getting home to your own bed out weighs the length of journey left. Of course choosing a date is important.

We did many of the things that a week up in the South Rhins includes. That means at least one visit to the RSPB Site on the Mull with a stop at the Gallie Craig from something to eat, a trip to Port Logan Botanical Gardens (my parents also managed to visit the Port Logan Fish Pond which is a rock-pool that was converted to house fish indefinitely. Originally this was so the laird could have fresh fish when he wanted it, but now is used rather as an aquarium for North Atlantic species although I do not think they have either whales or dolphins. We went also to Ardwell Gardens (because I got them mixed with Logan Botanical and thought we could get lunch there) and also saw the Kirkmadrine Stones .

The Saturday was my birthday and Morag and the girls had gone to town making a birthday cake in the shape of a church. As Morag says it was a bit high for me. The service was at 8:00 a.m. and signs of stained glass. However there was a goodly sized congregation of Jelly Babies including one of the doing the sound system! Some photos of the tripe are on Flickr.

I think the highlight was the "folk" concert we went to. Not because it was good. In many ways the event was just totally wrong for us. Three people with hearing aids and the fourth having to put her hands over her ears because the music was so loud. The main reason others seemed to have come was for a change in drinking venue. However we spent the whole of the first half sending messages to each other using pen and paper! A waitress came around to ask us if we wanted any more drinks, we said no but some more paper would be nice! Other people were trying to talk regardless of the performance but I think ours was the only conversation where every word was "heard" by all participants. In the Irish sense the crack was good even though we would not have chosen either the event or the venue if we had known more about it. The music was not bad being a person performing pop classic ballads, just loud (it was getting distortion from the speakers so even those with good hearing could not hear the words). Yes I knew some of them so I am pretty sure of my classification.

Another find was getting a Zen Stone plus and an Audiax FM Transmitter, means I can have music on to lower thought distraction when driving (almost essential on Motorways). I find that CDs need changing and radios have talk which actually is too distracting. Having the random selection playing from a good portion of my music collection (I have not put on my Christmas and Easter specifics) means that I get flow of music while I am driving without problems. The one thing I have discovered is I am eclectic in my music choices. Anything from pop balladeers (Chris de Burgh, Bruce Springsteen), some Jazz, through Celtic pop (Clannad, Runrig, Iona), Christian Praise, classics (both Mozart and moderns including Part) to world music particularly Indian and Jewish. Very little is particularly mainstream but it does cover a wide range.

I got back on Tuesday and since then have been trying to sort out precisely where I am supposed to be (with things going on it is nearly three weeks out of general circulation). I spent Thursday in Birmingham at a meeting of my supervisor's research students. My Supervisor has just been promoted to chair of liturgical and congregational studies! I am glad for him after a tough year in which he has lost both his parents. He is also deputy head of school and moved back to Edgebaston campus!

I think that is largely everyone up-to-date with what is going on, I will need to send a couple of notes to subgroups of you tomorrow with specific news (as I am at St. Andrew's Sheffield tomorrow it will have to wait until then), by the way we are having harvest at St. Andrew's tomorrow, I think global warming has brought the Scottish harvest forward to September from One World Week in October!! Does anyone with curiousity out there know what the theologising* behind "He was a master builder" is